China Shows Off Carrier, but Experts Are Skeptical

Source: New York Times

BEIJING — In a ceremony attended by the country’s top leaders, China put its first aircraft carrier into service on Tuesday, a move intended to signal its growing military might as tensions escalate between Beijing and its neighbors over islands in nearby seas...

American military planners have played down the significance of the commissioning of the carrier. Some Navy officials have even said they would encourage China to move ahead with building its own aircraft carrier and the ships to accompany it, because it would be a waste of money.

“The fact is the aircraft carrier is useless for the Chinese Navy,” You Ji, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, said in an interview. “If it is used against America, it has no survivability. If it is used against China’s neighbors, it’s a sign of bullying.”

Vietnam, a neighbor with whom China has fought wars, operates land-based Russian Su-30 aircraft that could pose a threat to the aircraft carrier, Mr. You said. “In the South China Sea, if the carrier is damaged by the Vietnamese, it’s a huge loss of face,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

30. The chance of a US-China shootin match is about nil

Superpower showdowns are a thing of the past. Buying this carrier is China's equivalent of John Adams wearing a sabre on his hip during the Quasi War with France in 1799. Superpower projections of force are about asymmetrical warfare, bullying southeast Asia or intimidating Somali pirates off the Horn. The carrier doesn't have to win a war or survive a battle. It's job is to look mean and suck in money.

66. Right on.....

Two well placed MK48s will send a Nimitz class carrier to the bottom...at least that's what we were taught in sub school....

This "carrier" sat in a Chinese harbor as a floating gambling casino before the Chinese government decided to refurbish it....it's old late 70s/early 80s soviet junk. Having had a chance to tour a Chinese destroyer in Pearl Harbor in '97 just before I got out, I was empressed on how clean it was, but despite it being a 5-6 year old vessel and their fleets flagship it looked archaic parked next to an aegis destroyers that we and the Japanese share...chinas navy grows more into relation to Japan's and India's than it does ours, both of whom have very well maintained modern navies....

70. Carriers can be sunk no doubt

but you have to get close enough to do it and if the skipper is half way competent that won't happen. I love the people here and elsewhere that say Iran's missiles will sink a US Carrier, do you honestly think we would allow one of our carriers to get anywhere near their missiles?

73. It's not a matter of how close...

The mk48, harpoon or tomahawk are OTH weapons, over the horizon, fired from miles and miles away....there are also factors like depth, water temputure, water salinity....etc, that allow a sub to hide from sonar....believe me, as good a navy as we have, only the helicopters have a snowballs chance of catching a sub....

5. Wal-Mart having pirate trouble?

6. Sorry to Disagree

China has interests in the Gulf, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean. To effectively project air power in areas with no bases you need carriers. That is why we have a carrier or two in each of those theaters. China tends to think strategically. Yes, costly. Totally unneeded, well as an former Air Force type, carriers are part of the necessary mix for global reach. I hope my family doesn't read this one.

16. You might also need one to hold on to the Spratlys.

Definitely not an admiral, here, but the next big naval war seems likely to erupt over the Spratly islands, or Taiwan, or over those silly little islands the Japanese want.

A carrier would permit operations from unexpected directions, in addition to shuttle-bombing far away targets with aircraft equipped to land and be turned around on the carrier, covering invasion fleets, and for the more usual purposes of bullying and diplomatic brinksmanship.

When unmanned drones begin fully replacing ground-attack aircraft, the deck, storage, and maintenance facilities a carrier can provide might make one even more valuable and useful than they already are.

23. I was also

thinking about the anti-piracy patrols China now have off somalia. And India and China have bones to pick with each other, hence force projection into the india ocean. If China is indeed likely to be one of the next superpowers, that force projection will develop.

Funny thing, about thirty years ago, I started writing a novel called "Passing the Torch" in which China is the new superpower, and Brazil is poised (as the US was in 1917) to take over as the leading power in the west. Shot down by publishers as being too unrealistic. Funny thing, I set this in the 2020 time frame. Anyone look at Brazil closely recently?

54. So in 5-10 years China will be able to launch a plane from a boat.

The planes won't stand up against the F-35 and the carrier won't be supported by any sort of naval battle group, but China will be physically able to send a boat into the water and launch planes from it.

65. The Chinese might decide to put together a support battlegroup... nt

68. It's not the US navy they're building up for.

It's India and Japan. That carrier might be old and antiquated, but behind they are only behind the US, France, and Brazil in carrier capability. This one carrier is superior to anything the UK, Spain, Italy, Russia*, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand have. No other nation even has a carrier (or facsimile thereof).

* Russia's carrier is a sister ship to China's but is extremely worn out due to lack of maintenance.

29. Buy 'em? Why not just wait a couple of years and repossess 'em for free?

9. I don't know what the status is of China's carrier aircraft.

Googling around, it looks like they had developed a clone of the Russian Sukhoi Su-33 fighter, which was developed for Russia's carrier (and I might mention that China's new carrier is actually a refurbished sister-ship of Russia's Admiral Kuznetzov.)

36. Forgers?

... towards the middle of the 1980s, the Yak-38 was removed from front line service and transferred to land-based operations. The aircraft proved to have problems in conditions of high heat/high humidity, was underpowered and lacked an adequate combat radius. In fact, due to these limitations, one of the nicknames that the aircraft earned in the Soviet naval jargon was "a pigeon of peace". Another less than flattering nickname earned due to inadequate combat radius was "fore-mast defense aircraft". In 1991, the type was retired from the Soviet Navy, and transferred to storage.

62. If the purpose ....

"If the purpose of the Iranians is to embarrass the US, they could throw everything they have at one of our carriers in the Persian Gulf. Maybe overwhelm the Aegis systems."

There would definatly be an embarsassing moment there, pretty sure it would not be the US that would be embarrassed. A direct attack on a carrier group would lead to a smackdown that would be very quick, and the point would be clear, "don't do that shit again".

71. Most likely we would destroy every military related target we can

Iran has not spent a fortune on real weapons - Iraq was the country with the modern weapons. Iran has old and obsolete equipment - most of which is Russian junk. Don't forget there has been an arms embargo on Iran for a very long time.

72. Smackdown

I would imagine, of coarse being pure speculation, that the response to a direct attack on a carrier group by Iran would look something like this.

Complete destruction of any offensive military capabilities within days.

Our POTUS making a statement to the world something to the tune of ....

Iran launched a full scale assualt on a carrier strike group last week, attacking with thier entire miliatry strength. Thier Navy, Air Force, a group of small fishing boats, and some remote controlled helicopters that appeared to be from Costco all attacked in unison and were all destroyed. Although our carriers have been designed to withstand tremendous attacks they have never been tested until now. We would like to report that although the vessel did sustain minor paint damage it will be touched up and be back in service shortly.

75. Heh

The premise of this was that Iran attacked, in full force, a carrier group of the USofA. Not that we invaded them, tried to "kill thier cattle and rape thier women".

"Nuke 'em till they glow" WTF are you talking about?

And as far as it being "one good Murikan boy/ship/plane", uhh no, it is a carrier strike group. It is 12,000 American men, one carrier, 6-8 support vessel, 60+ aircraft, and most likely 2 subs. In other words, about 100 Billion in assets, or roughly a quater of the nominal GDP of Iran.

This is not something that will happen, never ... Iran is not even close to being ignorant enough to even contemplate directly attacking a carrier unprevoked. This is a what would happen as in a Clancy novel or a Bay film.

So, as far as "I don't think people in this country have learned a damn thing since 2003", again WTF are you talking about?

14. When designed by the Soviets, this was intended air cover, nothing more

The Soviet had some concerns about the US Navy Carriers, but had an ace in the hole, Russia's longest Sea Coast in on the Arctic, its second largest sea coast is on the Pacific, but had almost no military targets. Its third largest coast line in on the Baltic, which is an inland sea easily shut off from the Atlantic, and covered by existing land based fighters. The sea of Murmansk is slightly more open, but open only to the Arctic and within Soviet land based fighter cover. The last sea coast is the Black Sea and under international Treaty no Carrier or other Capital Ship can enter that sea through the Bosphorus, thus no US Carrier can enter the Black Sea.

Now, Cruisers can go through the Bosphorus, and when this Aircraft Carrier was designed it was called a Cruiser for that reason. Furthermore its purpose seems to be to provide Air Cover for other ships, not the all purpose attack role of the much larger US Carriers:

While designated an aircraft carrier by the West, the design of the Admiral Kuznetsov class implied a mission different from carriers of the United States Navy, Royal Navy or French Navy. The term used by her builders to describe the Russian ships is "тяжёлый авианесущий крейсер" tyazholiy avianesushchiy kreyser (TAKR or TAVKR)—“heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser”—intended to support and defend strategic missile-carrying submarines, surface ships, and maritime missile-carrying aircraft of the Russian fleet. As such, the Soviet Union and Russia argued that these ships are not aircraft carriers under the Montreux Convention and not subject to the tonnage limits imposed on these ships in traveling through the Bosporus.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning

Thus this ship was to provide Air Cover for other vessels not to provide a deep strike like a US Carrier. Off the Chinese Coast it may be more valuable then the Larger US Carriers, permitting immediate air cover for any action in the seas between China and the off shore nations of Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan, with additional Air Cover coming from land based air craft but 15-30 minutes later. In that situation, which appears to be similar to what the Soviets intended her to be used (but off the coasts of Norway and Turkey) it appears to be an effective ship. It would be a prime target of any US Carrier, submarine, or other weapon system, but if used in conjunction with land based planes (and if it stays within range of those land based planes) a valuable asset.

This ship is twice as large as the WWII Era Essex Class Carriers, and is 10,000 tons heavier in displacement then the 1991 launched amphibious assault ship, USS Essex.

58. I'll readily defer to your current on-the-ground perspective if you promise me you

will read David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter (about the Korean War). The Chinese military may be a 'paper tiger' now, but it most certainly was not when it attacked the United States' military in the 50s in Korea, after MacArthur ignored repeated warnings and advanced his troops above the 38th parallel. Halberstam does a good job of describing what the experience was like for those attacked American troops, most of whom would take serious issue with your description of China's military as a 'paper tiger.'

27. The white gloves on the Marine uniforms is a nice touch. Very Edwardian.

This is like the perfect photograph for the 21st century. The ascetic-fascist uniform of the politician, the archaic and needless pomp of the red carpet and out of date troop uniforms, the waste of aspirational military spending in a mostly peaceful world, the military hardware that will probably fall apart under actual combat conditions, and the button-down business like uniform of the bureaucrat-officers trying to make it all hold together.

Also, the photograph is well constructed. Art thrives in all conditions.

32. If they build ships like they build roads, we're all set./ n./t

33. This is the Varyag, the second hull of the Soviet Admiral Kuznetsov class

It has no catapults and has a "ski jump" bow designed for Su-33 forger STOL/VTOL aircraft, which China does not have. As fitted by the USSR, it was to be more of an aircraft-carrying missile cruiser as it had provisions for a lot of heavy surface-to-surface missiles.

Make no mistake, this thing would have been quite formidable as part of a Soviet battle group but it was not designed as an offensive force projection platform the way US carriers are. It was designed to defend naval choke points and would not be very good at defending itself without help from a large battle group.

The Chinese are saying this is a "training" ship and I believe it. They will use it to learn carrier operations and tactics before designing and building one or more of their own sometime down the road.

45. U.S. space technology of 1969 landed men on the moon

49. China hasn't put a man on moon,

hasn't sent a rover to Mars, nor sent a probe into deep space... let alone built a space station. They are decades away.
Likewise, their new carrier doesn't use a catapult, nor do they have any experience launching and retrieving planes from a ship. Pretty much where the US was 70 years ago. Again, it will take them a few decades to catch up.